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Sunday, February 26, 2012

One bad weekend and the Devils have gone from fourth place to sixth in the Eastern Conference.

After today’s 4-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning at Prudential Center, the Devils could be tied in points with Ottawa for sixth/seventh – depending on the outcome of the Senators’ game today against the Islanders.

“It’s that close,” Devils coach Pete DeBoer said of the conference playoff race. “We know that. The standings are posted in our room. The guys know how important all the games are. The key is to learn from the mistakes and move forward here. We’ve got another big game tomorrow, so that’s the good news that we can get right back at it.”

The Devils had won four in a row heading into Friday’s 2-1 loss to Vancouver. Losing that game to the team that’s first overall in points wasn’t anything to be alarmed about. But combine that loss with today’s sloppy effort and the Devils are suddenly on a two-game losing streak as they head to Madison Square Garden Monday night to face the conference-leading Rangers.

“That’s what’s tough in this league,” said goaltender Martin Broduer, who will start in net again Monday night. “You play any team – they go into Pittsburgh (Saturday) and get beat 8-1 and they come here and they beat us and we’re (three points behind) Pittsburgh. It’s just the way it is. You have to play every single game the right way to be successful and sometimes bounces don’t go your way and you’ve just got to get back up and do it again.”

Although the Devils grabbed a 1-0 lead on Alexei Ponikarovsky’ unassisted goal 12:07 into the first period, they didn’t do enough early to jump on a Lightning team that was routed by the Penguins Saturday. The Devils let the Lightning hang around long enough that when they did make some mistakes in the second, they were costly.

“When you play a team on back-to-back nights and they haven’t played well (Saturday), we have to take advantage of it," Patrik Elias said. "We had chances and we’ve got to bury those. You’ve got to try to get the lead as soon as possible not to give them any life and make it tough on them.

“They made the game boring, but very effective.”

Martin St. Louis took advantage to register his sixth career hat trick and also had an assist.

“I liked our team effort Friday,” DeBoer said. “(Today), I thought we were asleep. No excuse. We talked about them getting beat (Saturday) like they did in Pittsburgh. They have guys in their room with a lot of pride. St. Louis would be at the top of that list. You knew you were going to see their best game tonight and we didn’t respond in the right way.”

St. Louis’ first goal, which tied the game at 1 6:39 into the second, came on a 2-on-0 with Steven Stamkos, which resulted from the Devils being caught in the middle of a defense change and Cam Janssen’s inability to intercept a playable outlet pass from goaltender Mathieu Garon. The puck got past Janssen to Stamkos in the neutral zone and he passed to St. Louis to send him in on Brodeur on a breakaway.

Janssen did not see the ice after that.

“The details of the game was where we really weren’t sharp – line changes, battles for the puck, being hard to play against, going to the net,” DeBoer said. “We got too fancy. A lot of little areas we’re usually very good in, we weren’t tonight.”

Then, the Lightning got a power-play on a questionable tripping call against Ilya Kovalchuk and the puck pinballed around a couple of times in front before St. Louis put home a Teddy Purcell rebound for a power-play goal at 14:55.

“We dominated the first period pretty good and we thought maybe it was going to be easy,” Brodeur said. “They didn’t do much. They kept it really, really simple early on and they got a break. We made a mistake, they got a 2-on-0 and scored and they got a power play and scored and we were right behind the eight ball. This time of the year, you’re going to face teams like that and you have to find ways to win hockey games.”

Even after the Devils tied the game on Petr Sykora’s goal 2:28 into the third period, they got sloppy again and gave up an odd-man rush that resulted in Matt Gilroy’s goal only 41 seconds later.

“Today was a huge two points for us and we’ve got to win those games,” Kovalchuk said. “We know they are maybe not as desperate as we are they play with nothing to lose and when you play like that sometimes things go your way.”

Now, the Devils must regroup quickly and will have to beat the Rangers Monday to avoid a three-game losing streak.

“I don’t think anybody was thinking about the Rangers tomorrow,” Elias said. “Every game is important. We wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. We have a tough schedule coming up, tough games coming up.”

“Our compete level has to be a lot higher and I expect it to be,” Devils captain Zach Parise said. “We always get the intensity level up when we’re playing the Rangers, so I would expect us to be lot better (Monday.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.